March 22, 2013

Spring Break starts today at 5pm when I'm done judging cheer tryouts!!!!!! I can't wait. Even though I have Lit Circle packets to grade and a test to create for my English Support class, I plan on relaxing the rest of the time. I hoping there's sun so I can start to work on being less pasty :)

So we have this AMAZING custodian at our school. One of his gifts is that he loves to build things...he built benches for our students to sit on during lunch and break, and he built a podium for the teacher next door to me. Well I saw his and became envious! But his was a bit chunkier than what I wanted, or have room for :/ So I talked to our custodian and asked if he'd build me a podium, with a little smaller frame. And he came up with the cutest thing!

There's a shelf for the speakers, when I play a power point or education movie, and then the top where the computer is, has a lip on it so if the podium gets bumped, the computer won't just slide off. I love it!!!!!!! I'm so excited and can't wait to do my first power point from it :) I'm a nerd :)

Anyway, hope you all have amazing spring breaks, or a good last week until your spring break :)

March 14, 2013

I am awful at math, but I do know that today is an awesome day! And as my students just informed me, in the year 2015, it will be March 14, 2015=3.14.15 :) I still learn something new everyday!

So for today, since I am an English teacher, our journal was a homophone....I asked them to write about their favorite kind of pie in honor of Pi Day :) I've never heard of so many different kinds of pie! Pumpkin, Banana Cream, Boston Cream, Key Lime, Blueberry, Apple...one kid even said Chicken Pot Pie :)

Our wonderful parents also brought in several different kinds of pie for the teachers to enjoy...if I wasn't gluten free I would have enjoyed them all ;)

March 8, 2013

Happy Friday everyone!!!! I've had a lot of people love my lesson planner but couldn't seem to edit via the link I provided.

I've uploaded it again to google docs, but I think the font may be messed up on your guys' end :/ So hopefully you all are tech savy enough to fix the font to work for you, and then you'll be able to edit the planner to fit your needs!

March 4, 2013

Loved today! We were given a day of professional development to go observe other teachers in our field. I chose to go back to the school where I did my student teaching because I still have a connection with my master teacher.

As you may know from reading the blog, I started an English Support class this year for students struggling in their current English class. Well Erika also teaches a similar class, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to observe. She gave me a ton of resources at the beginning of the year so that I could get my class off and running, and they have worked out really well thus far. It was exciting to get to see how she teaches, the curriculum she uses [her school adopted a book/curriculum for this course this year], and the student response. Though we have a very different student population, it was easy to see how the activities she is using could be easily adaptable to my classroom.

I was also lucky enough to observe Jill [my 9th & 10th grade English teacher!] while she taught her Senior Seminar course. Our school has a Senior Project, and we have been struggling with how to integrate it into the English Department. While Jill didn't really teach today, the kids were presenting their career projects, I was able to find some great items that my school can use in our Senior Project course.

All this idea sharing is why I started this blog, so it was so uplifting to get to experience other teachers and glean some ideas from them.

March 2, 2013

Love when Farley does her Currently posts! This March one is especially cute; love how creative she is :) I also love that is was 75-80 degrees today, so I drove down Highway 101 and found a great place to grade papers with my Starbucks :)

Anyway, on to the currently. Yay for March! [And happy birthday to my dad :)]